MSI Press Blog

Most language learners aim for fluency. Some even reach what’s called Professional Level Proficiency —that sweet spot where you can function in a workplace, navigate nuance, even toss in an idiom or two. But those aiming beyond that—toward near-native proficiency —often find themselves mysteriously stuck. Stalled. Plateaued. Why? The answer, according to Shekhtman (in Developing Professional Level Language Proficiency ), lies in one of the most stubborn and often ignored culprits in language acquisition: grammatical fossilization . He breaks down language use into three categories: Automatic-correct Automatic-incorrect Not-automatic Ideally, we all move from not-automatic to automatic-correct. But what often happens instead? Learners get comfy with automatic-incorrect. These are speech habits that have been internalized—and once they're habitual, they’re hard to undo. That's grammatical fossilization: the incorrect gets baked in, and it won’t unbake itself . Fossilization: Y...

  In earlier posts, we’ve talked about hares and tortoises in language learning—those classic learner types who approach fluency either in a burst of brilliance or with deliberate, measured steps. Today, let’s revisit the hares, particularly those who have found a comfortable resting place at Level 3, or “Professional Proficiency,” and seem quite happy to stay there. Hares, often synoptic, right-brain dominant learners , shoot ahead in language acquisition. They become impressively fluent very quickly. They can talk around vocabulary gaps with creative circumlocutions. They can paraphrase on the fly, improvise idioms, and charm listeners with their expressive energy. But what happens when the hare, having outpaced the tortoise in reaching Level 3, falls asleep just shy of the finish line ? This, as Ehrman points out in Developing Professional-Level Foreign Language Proficiency (Leaver & Shekhtman), is the phenomenon of level  fossilization . (There are other forms o...